Lord Sugar criticised for sharing baseless coronavirus conspiracy theory

Sugar claimed that Covid-19’s origins were ‘not clear’ to him

Lord Alan Sugar has been criticised for sharing an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory about coronavirus.

Early this morning (23 September), The Apprentice star asked his Twitter followers where they thought Covid-19 had come from, adding that its origins were “not clear to me”.

“There was talk of Huhan [sic] in China but also talk of a leaked sample made in a research lab,” Sugar, 73, wrote.

“Why would a lab be making it. Consider this virus has put the world on its knees. It's as if [a] James Bond villain planned it.”

While this conspiracy theory circulated widely on social media at the beginning of the pandemic, there is no evidence that coronavirus was made in a lab.

Sugar’s name quickly trended on Twitter as people complained about the tweets, with one user comparing the comments to “the rambling of a doped up teenager”.

“What to believe, the many genetic studies that say it wasn’t made in a lab or Alan Sugar’s half-remembered boomer Facebook meme,” another responded to Sugar’s tweet.

Many also pointed out their disappointment in seeing Sugar, who is a member of the House of Lords, use his platform in this way.

“I think a Lord of the realm shouldn’t be involved in baseless conspiracy theories,” one follower commented.

“If you want to know how we got into the state we're in: Lord Sugar gets to vote on our laws for the rest of his life, and he's self-evidently an imbecile,” another wrote.

The Independent has contacted Sugar’s reps for comment.

It’s not the first time Sugar has shared his views on the pandemic, in June claiming that lockdown should end because nobody he personally knew had died.

Just a week later, it was announced that The Apprentice was cancelled for 2020 due to fears over the virus.